Tag Archives: XXI Century Socialism

Twenty-five years ago today the Berlin Wall fell, that monument to the brutality that the domesticated ape is capable of when its operating software is infected by bad ideas. Twenty-five years is a dangerous amount of time because it is enough time for an entire generation to have grown up largely unaware of the significance of the event, and by extension of the horrors of socialism when put in practice. Around 42% of the current world population was born after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Yet considering that before a certain age (around 15?) politics and economics are largely alien interests, the percentage of us that are left largely to our own devices to learn about this history is much greater than 42%. This is dangerous if there is some reason to believe that those who do not know their history are condemned to repeat it.nike air max cheap
Another reason that twenty-five years is dangerous, is that it is just enough time for those who cried of sadness (and many in my home Latin America did) instead of joy when the wall fell to have distorted history enough to make socialism appealing once again. After all history, is not written by the victors, it is written by the resentful (regrettably these are often the same ones that write the textbooks). The advance of twenty first century socialism by Podemos in Spain, and its consolidation in Latin America, are proof positive that the failure of socialism in Eastern Europe has long been forgotten by those not directly affected by it, and that it has been revived and revised by the necromancers of bad ideas. In trying to understand how this is possible at least part of the problem is thinking that societies learn from their past. Societies do not learn from their past, individuals do. It is only when the learning of individuals is institutionalized that societies are capable of learning. But this analysis stops short as well because institutions are only self perpetuating on average terms and in the long run, the consolation of the economist is the misery of everyone else that lives in crests and troughs of history, and not on the trendline.air max 95 release dates
The revived version of socialism slightly alters the means and goals of its former self. Unlike its Marxist-Leninism, it does not aim at producing more than capitalism, but rather at producing “buen vivir” or good living (as defined by the government’s sub-secretary of good living of course). The means have been revised as well, rather than the complete abolishment of private property, productive firms are to be directed by the state, with only certain sectors ripe for outright nationalization. Very reminiscent of Lenin’s New Economic Policy. Thus the only problem with socialism that this revised version concedes is the one that all practical implementations have conceded, the one pointed out by Mises, something really telling about the fundamental economic problem with socialism. The concession in the means employed by all the implementations of socialism is really a testament to Mises’ paradox of planning. The change in the goals of twenty first century socialism is telling as well. If you can’t accomplish what you originally set out to accomplish with the means you propose, alter your goal to that which your means can accomplish. If the means you propose are unable to deliver material prosperity but instead deliver poverty, redefine poverty as “good living”, and set up an official agency to preach about it.ray ban sunglasses Discount